Mr. Roger Hall …. last known in British Columbia has been found ….

It is the sort of discovery which would gladden the heart of anyone engaged in family history.

The Griffth farmhouse, New Brunswick, 2008

More so because Roger Hall had disappeared almost a full century ago and despite the efforts of me in the UK and my Canadian cousins, he remained the “lost relative”.

He had been born in 1898 in Birmingham to Montague and Eliza who were our great grandparents.  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship and after moving from Derby via Birmingham and London, they settled in Gravesend only to split in 1902.  He remained in Gravesend, and she returned to Derby with her three sons and it was there in the Derby Workhouse that she gave birth to her last child.

Her return was not an easy one and for most of their childhood the children were in care before being placed in occupations.  Roger and my grandfather proved more troublesome, and both were sentenced to a naval boot camp.  Granddad went but great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada, migrated as a British Home Child in 1914.*

His Attestation Papers, 1915

In a few short months he worked on three Canadian farms, being sent back twice and absconding from the third to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  In the process he changed his name, lied about his age and gave his aunt as next of kin rather than his mother.

His unwillingness to conform on the farms was replicated in the army and he court martialled four times, once for hitting an officer and three times for absence without leave.

But he survived, returned to Canada, and persuaded his sister to follow him out on an Empire Assisted Scheme in 1925, and then sometime after that we lost him.

Until our Marisa found him on the census return for the Municipality of Coquitlam in British Columbia.

One of his letters, 1916

He was lodging with a family, gave his occupation as a labourer on a farm and was single.

There is much more to find out which I know our Marisa will uncover. But its is the first real reference we have after 1925 and confirms his sister’s belief that he had headed out to the west of Canada, a place still in the making and as rough and ready with promise of new things as the western states of its neighbour.

I suspect it was somewhere that would allow a young restless man an opportunity to reinvent himself.

As it was, he had reverted to his given names of Roger and Hall, which had been dropped in favour of James Rogers when he ran away and enlisted.  That reversion seems to have muddied the search but now we have him, living in a community dominated by single men from China and Japan who were labourers.

His landlord was a James William Williams who was also from the UK and was a barber aged 42 and perhaps a search may reveal something more of his Canadian life.  I know he was married to Mary and that their daughter, Elizabeth Mary was born in BC in 1917.

There are several James William Williams who fit the date of birth in various bits of Britain which in turn may offer up more.

But essentially that is it.

To which some will mutter so what?  And follow it up with, “apart from the family what interest can there be in a man who disappeared a century ago?”

Well, whenever research brings anyone out of the shadows that is a good result and even more so when he is a member of that group of children who were migrated to Canada and later other parts of the former British Empire. 

Places he knew, St John River, NB, 2008

They were sent from 1870 and a century later some British organizations were still engaged in settling young people in Australia.

Until recently they were a virtually forgotten group and while they are still a neglected part of our history at least in Canada the study of British Home Children has become a serious area of historic study.*

That study has occasioned a serious debate about the motives of those engaged in the migration, the effects on the young people both at the time and subsequently, and the contribution they made to the countries they settled in.

And our great uncle was one of them.

Special thanks to our cousin Marisa Cooper who continued the search for Roger Hall when I had all but given up.

Location; Canada,

Pictures; One of the farms he stayed at in New Brunswick, 2008, his Attestation papers, 1915, letter from Roger James Hall/James Rogers, February 2, 1916, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of the Griffith's farmhouse, N.B., Angela Faubert, 2008

*British Home Children, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

Waiting for that fast service to Central ................ standing on the platform at Chorlton-cum-Hardy railway station

Now I am part of that generation that grew up with steam locomotives.

And I don’t mean those special heritage steam trains I mean the full on thing, when everything from the intercity express down to sedate suburban commuter links and the humble unromantic goods locos were all steam powered.

All of which makes this picture postcard of our station one to cherish particularly because there are very few of the inside of the station.

I don’t have a date for this one but it will be before 1926 when an aerial picture shows the station without the footbridge which the historian John Lloyd says was removed “to save the expense of maintaining it and the public had to use the road bridge.”**

So we have just 40 or so years to play with because the station was opened in 1880 and judging by  the quality of the picture postcard I am guessing we will be sometime in the early years of the last century.

And that quality allows you to focus in on the detail from the iron work under the bridge to the signs advising passengers to use the foot bridge to cross the tracks which proved particularly relevant after the death of Mary Jane Cockrill of Oswald Road in 1909 who was run down by "a fast train approaching the station."***

I don’t think you have to have an over vivid imagination to put yourself on that platform just over a century ago.

The place is empty save for the staff and the chap in the bowler hat who I suspect runs the kiosk, so we must be in one of those in between moments and given that there are no passenger either a train has just gone through or this is that long wait between the morning commuter rush and the evening return.

And for anyone who has ever been alone on a warm summer’s day waiting for a train the scene will be all too familiar.

There will be that silence punctuated by the odd noise from the road in the distance the clunck of a shunting engine and the sound of the platform clock.

And if you have timed it wrongly there could still be a hint of steam left from the departing train and the last solitary commuter making their way out up the approach path to Wilbraham Road.

Which means that you are left to idle the time away looking at the headlines from the newspaper posters, ponder on the promises being made by the adverts and perhaps spend a penny on that weighing machine.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, date unknown

Picture; Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station, date unknown, courtesy of Mark Fynn***

*Looking Back At Chorlton-cum-Hardy, John Lloyd, 1985

**Woman Killed at Chorlton In front of a railway train, Manchester Guardian, January 11, 1909 although to be accurate her death was a suicide

***Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html, 

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979

A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

This is the end of the journey, and features pictures I don’t think I have used before.

The Rochdale Canal runs out into the Castlefield Basin under the Castle Street Bridge, at Lock 92.

In the 1970s and into the next decade this was still a shabby, slightly edgy, but wonderful place, which was, and is, at the centre of much of our industrial past. 

It was a major switching hub, where the river, the new railways and the canal network  met, supplying the diverse industries of the city.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

7 am on Beech Road

 Nothing more exciting than a trip to buy a bottle of milk.

H.OB. Gallery, 2025

But there is always the temptation to look in at the shop windows.

Beech Road, 2025

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; H.O.B Gallery, 2025 and Beech Road, 2025

In Beresford Square in the summer of 1978

Woolwich in 1979

Now I know I have posted this picture before, but I took it and I like it.

So that is enough for me.

But putting aside that demonstration of brash arrogance it is a candidate for that “lost images of Woolwich” series that I sometimes feature.

I took it with one of my old Pentax K 1000 cameras which are like the 1950s Morris Minor or the simple Nokia mobiles of the past.

All were robust, simple to use and a joy to look at and no matter what you did to them they continued to work quite happily.

My Nokia

The K 1000 had travelled all over Europe with me and took superb images on the hottest day in Athens and the coldest in Rome.   As for my old Nokia it may not have had connected to the internet, couldn’t take pictures and only played Snake, but you could drop it and it just bounced and the battery didn’t run out in an hour.

As for the Morris Minor, that was the chosen car of my friend Tony in the 1960s who maintained that given the huge number that had been manufactured he would never have a problem getting spares.

So “washing the prawns in Beresford Square” qualifies to be inducted into the same hall of fame.

Back then this bit of Woolwich was colourful and vibrant and there were always plenty of things to buy, people to watch and things to photograph.

I showed the picture to my lads who were horrified that something that you might buy and later eat was being washed in water from a standby tap in the open on market day.

Varese, 2012

When I added that buses regularly negotiated the square just a few yards away they muttered “health and safety” and returned to their prewashed, in date, packet of grapes which had some come via the supermarket in its own sealed container.

Not that this is a plea for the past or a rosy nostalgic rant for a real time when everything smelt better, tasted better and did you good.

My memories of our local grocer’s shop was of cheese which came as either white or red, fruit in tins and piles of spam and of course those open  tins by the counter of broken biscuits.

Varese 2012

That said open air markets can still be places where bargains are found, and they are not all farmers markets of those that trade as German/Italian/Spanish ones, which from my experience always seem to sell the same thing at ridiculously inflated prices.

But then perhaps I am showing my age.  That said those old fashioned markets still exist offering up fun, food and a bit of excitement.

So I shall close with my old image of Woolwich market taken on a warm summer's day in 1979.

Alas nearly all the pictures I took that day have been lost or given away and the few negatives I still have stubbornly refuse to offer up a decent print.

But they were made in that pre digital age when what you saw down the lens was pretty much what you created.

Of course there may be other people with similar views of Woolwich and I would love to see them.


Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 160 .... treasures from the cellar

The continuing story   of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

This is a 30-amp rewireable fuse carrier and will be familiar to any one who was born in the first half of the last century.

And it would have been very familiar to Joe Scott who installed it in the house in 1915, and I don’t suppose he would have been surprised that it was still in use a full seventy years later or that in times of electrical failure I would mend the fuse the way I had been taught by dad.

But 1985 marked its demise and it was replaced by a bigger and more modern box which has in turn been consigned to electrical history.

The fuse, and its box I kept along with other fuses, and over the years they have featured in stories of the house.**

So, today I decided to return to these relics and dig deeper into their past.  

They were made by the MidlandElectric Manufacturing Company (MEM) which was founded in 1908 in Birmingham, and was known for quality electrical switchgear, fusegear, and motor controls. ***

The quality isn’t in question, given that people still buy them second hand today commanding prices of £20 and more, while the fuse box ranges upwards from £49.

But they carry that warning that they do not fit modern standards, and given that our new one installed last month almost talks back to me I can see why.

Still my porcelain fuses and their fuse box are little treasures of the history of the house, and connect me not only to how things were done but also to Joe Scott who like me on occasion would have had to fumble in the cellar with a torch and some fuse wire to retore power.

Happily our new box allows me to fall back on that simple approach I adopted about all things electrical and water ….. “leave well alone” and ask someone who knows.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; treasures from the cellar, 30-amp rewireable fuse carrier, and its companion fuse box, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 81 ...... the story the house won’t reveal, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2017/03/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

*** MEM Company, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/MEM_Co

 

When Stretford was sniffy about Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now I know this will upset the residents of Stretford and no doubt bits of Chorlton too but it happened and here is the story.

Strolling by the park circa 1900

Back in 1913 the Manchester Courier reported on plans by the Stretford District Council “to establish a public museum at Longford Park”*

It was felt that “that among the residents many relics of Old Stretford, historical and literary, and probably natives who had removed further afield might have in their possession objects which would be of great interest to the present generation.”

And to this end one room of Longford Hall would be given over to the exhibits.

So far so good, but the chair of the Stretford District Council also chose to take a swipe at the residents of Chorlton commenting that the said Chorlton residents were “making a footpath across the park from the Ryecroft road entrance to that in Edge Lane.  If it still persisted he should feel it his duty to recommend to the Council to close the entrance from Chorlton-cum-Hardy.”

And that is all I shall say.

Location Stretford

Picture; on Edge Lane strolling by Longford Park in the early 1900s, courtesy of Sally Dervan

*Local Art Collection in Longford Park, Manchester Courier, July 2, 1913